


catching moondrops

by ender



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-11
Updated: 2012-09-01
Packaged: 2017-11-05 03:56:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/402186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ender/pseuds/ender
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the concept of five people you meet in heaven meets homestuck sort of</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The End

**One Hour Before**

_This is the Alpha timeline,_ he reminded himself as he tenderly picked up the frog, hoping that it might be the last one they needed. He couldn’t remember how many frogs they had collected, but he somehow managed to keep track of how many seconds until the end. 

He wanted to stop mindlessly collecting frogs and start preparing. _Preparing for what?_ Harley might ask, and he would respond, _Preparing for Jack, obviously._ No mention of anything else. No letting her know what fate will befall on him.

As he freezes his ass off in the cold, he thinks, _Wow, what a way to go. By the time Jack gets here, I’ll already be dead via hypothermia._ He doesn’t voice his complaints because he knew that Harley would immediately bundle him up like a little kid playing in the snow for the first time while Harley toughed it out in her sleeveless dress—her really beautiful dress that hugged her curves in ways that he shouldn’t think about. 

For once, he thanks the frog beast or whatever it was for the cold.

She waved him over to help her collect a particularly hard-to-reach frog, and he obliged. He let her clamber up his back to reach the frog, and he almost let out a snide remark about how inappropriate her dress is for trekking through the forest.

But he doesn’t say it. He held himself back because he knew that everything would be over soon. He wanted more minutes, more seconds, more moments to waste. But he didn’t consider these moments wasted. He didn’t consider any moment with his friends as wasted.

Even the moments where he was hunting down an endless amount of frogs were precious. He tried not to let the fact that he was making these memories with Jade affect the value of these moments, but it didn’t work.

She called him over to help her yet again. He would never be done helping her.

**Thirty-eight Minutes Before**

They decided to take a break from catching frogs and sat on the cold, sandy beach. He was glad that he was wearing shades because she couldn’t see his unnerving stare as he attempted to soak up all the little details he could.

As she emphatically described one of her adventures, he watched her hair dance and flow down her back as if it were alive. He saw the highlights of her life through her eyes more than her words. Her eyes that were both happy and sad, confident and terrified. Although she seemed to be mostly joyful when talking about Bec, there were still moments when her eyes betrayed her cheerful mood and showed her desolation when thinking about what Bec had become, what her dreamself had turned into.

When she finished her story, she absentmindedly rested her head against his shoulder, took his hand into hers, and toyed with it as if it held the secrets of the universe. He tensed slightly, but didn’t say anything.

He knew that they both felt a need to fill up silence with anything, and so she asked him how to use turntables and rambled on about how the discs felt underneath his fingers, to be completely in control. _No more chances to feel the power beneath my fingertips. But there’s still time to hang out with Harley._

He attempted to steel his nerves and grab her face and kiss the fuck out of her, or at last kiss her on the cheek and let her know how he feels, but there was a voice in the back of his mind that whispered, _What if she says no? What if she doesn’t like me like I like her? What if I screw things up and it’s awkward for the last 29 minutes and 43 seconds we have left?_

He doesn't make a move.

**Nineteen Minutes Before**

They had returned to frog hunting, and he wanted to say something to her—just tell her that he wouldn’t survive. _But would that help her through it? Would telling her beforehand cushion the blow, or stop her from shooting the bullet_

 _No. No, it wouldn’t. Then this would become a doomed timeline._ No more doomed timelines. No more Daves traveling back in time because they fucked everything up again. No more horrific memories from other timelines where he had let them all die. Not anymore. He would make sure that they would be successful this time. And he wouldn’t tell her that she would be the one to kill him.

This is the Alpha timeline, and this time he won’t fuck up.

**Fifteen Minutes Before**

He was walking over to her with the successful capture of two croaking beasts when she noticed the black figure descending down the mountain. He saw the look of fear in her eyes and knew what she saw. But he still hoped that it wasn’t time yet _(even though he had been counting down the minutes, the seconds until his time was up.)_ He hoped that he still had more time to make more moments, more memories.

But lo and behold, Jack was rushing down the mountain.

They glanced at each other and readied themselves for Jack’s first attack.

**Ten Minutes Before**

_She jumped in front of me. She fucking jumped in front of me._ She wasn’t supposed to risk her life for him. That’s not how it works. He’s the hero. He’s the knight. _I'm the one who's supposed to die when Jack comes._

But she doesn’t die. Jack doesn’t dare attack his owner. _At least we have that in common._ Jack growls and bares his teeth at him, and he’s tempted to do the same. 

He fights back as hard as he can even though he knows that it’s all useless. And yet, he hopes that maybe if he does his best, he can still live.

**Seven Minutes Before**

She keeps firing bullets, and he keeps counting the seconds until his death. He doesn’t know whether he’ll die quickly or slowly, and he can’t help but feel relieved each time a bullet whizzes by instead of piercing through his chest.

He keeps making small time loops in an attempt to overwhelm Jack with the sheer amount of Daves in his face, but he still manages to count down relative to her time.

There are no words spoken between them, save for the occasional curse word when either one of them is hurt.

**Twenty Seconds Left**

He sees Harley aim her gun at Jack. He sees Jack’s body flash all the colors of the cosmos, and he knew that it was time.

If only he had the guts to say something to Harley before it was too late.

**Eight Seconds Left**

Harley had her finger on the trigger. His time was almost up, but his mind was still running possible scenarios. _You could stop her. You could slap the gun right out of her hands. You could grab her from behind so that she’d end up shooting at the sky._

But he doesn't do anything. He thought about what his last words could be, but before he could choose a satisfying one-liner, he remembered that he wouldn’t have any time to say anything.

So instead, he closed his eyes tightly and braced himself for the pain that would come.

**Zero Seconds Left**

He felt the first bullet go through his body and exploding out the front of his chest. Then the second. Then the third. And a fourth. And a fifth. And a sixth. _Jegus fuck, Harley. How many times did you shoot? How long until you realized the bullets were going right through him?_

There was nothing left that he could do. There were no heroic last words he could choke out.

The bullets ripped through his body, but there was no pain, no screaming.

Just one strong, gloved hand pulling him away from his wrecked body.


	2. The First Person Dave Meets in the Dream Bubbles

_Where is my pain?_ Dave wondered. He felt his chest to see if any of the bullets had lodged there, but there were none. He ran his hands through his hair wondering where his headache, fatigue, and Jade’s bullets had gone. He pinched and prodded, slapped and smacked, hit and bit himself, but felt nothing. _Where is my pain?_

After he finished his self-examination, he observed his surroundings and noticed that he was in a room he didn’t recognize. There were strange cards, red and yellow bear things, and posters with foreign writing plastered across the room. Is that Arabic? 

When he looked out the window, he only saw sand. Piles and piles of sand. Wow, fuck, do I have to spend eternity here? Seeing as there was nothing else to do, Dave promptly sat down and started drawing a comic mocking his current situation.

“What is that?” a raspy, quiet voice said. Dave whipped his head around, scanning the room for the source of the voice, but to his avail, he saw nothing. “Uh, it’s not very nice to call my host plushes “shitty.” They’re actually pretty cool!” Dave fervently searched for the person talking, but they, once again, eluded him.

The voice continued, “Uh, not to critique your comic or anything, but Pupa Pan isn’t for children. It’s actually a movie for all ages.” It trailed off at the end, but still effectively sent chills down Dave’s spine.

“Hey man, I realize that you’re having fun creeping me out and shit, but it’s time for the game to stop and you to come out.” His voice quivered at the end, and he hoped that whatever demon spawn was talking to him wouldn’t notice.

It didn’t. “Oh, you can’t see me? Uh, sorry about that. Just give me a second.” Dave heard rustling around the room and a few miscellaneous items being picked up and tossed around.

“Shit man, you should’ve told me that you were hanging bare pickle out here. I can feel myself getting the vapors just by the thought of being in a room with a naked man. I’m a delicate flower, you know.” He rambled on and on, waiting for the person to materialize—is it even a person?I

Although in reality he had only waited a few minutes, those few minutes felt like hours to him. He wasn’t sure if it was because he was losing track of time for once in his life, or because all time seemed to stand still.

The nervousness of the voice in the distance reminded him of someone who occasionally tried to pick a fight with, although doing so very unsuccessfully—when he was younger, Dave had talked to a troll. Or rather, he trolled a troll attempting to troll him. To Dave, the reverse-trolling had occurred long ago, but it as still fresh in the troll’s mind.

 _Wait wait wait… am I actually going to meet a fucking troll?_ He had long wondered what had looked like, and he prayed to God that they weren’t too monstrous—he wouldn’t want to spend eternity or something with something he can’t bear to look at.

The voice materialized, and he found himself looking at what seemed like a grey boy with cartoonish horns—in both length and color. At first glance, it seemed like the boy was wearing metallic pants, but closer inspection proved him to have metal legs. In fact, closer inspection showed that they were not very alike except for their shape. The boy’s skin was a strange mixture of scaly and not, his fingers had talons on them rather than nails, and his teeth seemed too big and too sharp for his mouth—as if every time he used his jaw, he shredded his mouth.

 

Dave avoided looking at the troll’s eyes. When he first materialized, Dave caught a glimpse of the blank eyes, and—quite honestly—they scared the shit out of him. All signs of life gone from the eyes—all the little idiosyncrasies that he could notice in Jade’s eyes, all of the ones he hid behind his own shades just gone. Kaput. 

“So, uh, I guess you some questions?” the troll rubbed his arm slightly, tilting his head as if he himself were the one asking the questions. “Like, um, why you don’t fee any pain?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I was just wondering that. What the fuck happened to my pain? One moment, I’m being pelleted by goddamn bullets and now even when I try to fucking pinch myself, nothing. Am I fucking dreaming right now?” His words tumble out of his mouth like water to a waterfall.

“Kind of. You’re dead, actually.”

Dave stares at the troll incredulously, looks for a mirror, and lowers his glasses. Those blank, lifeless eyes stared back at him. He waved a hand in front of his face. He could see the hand, but there were no pupils that followed it. He snickered a little, reminded of Roses’ “magic” cue ball which she claimed held the secrets of their universe and the next. Except his eyes had no secrets in them. The little details in his eyes that he had tried to hide were not there.

He dropped his shades. _No use for them anyway._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> belated chapter...

**Author's Note:**

> ahhhh thank you for reading until the end! I hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
